Statistics show that compared with white women, black women are twice as likely to be single.
Have you met this woman? She has a good job, works hard, earns a good salary. She went to college, got her master’s degree; she is intelligent. She is personable, articulate, well read, interested in everybody and everything. Yet, she’s single… Black folks look up to her, and white folks know she is a force to be reckoned with. Yet … the men leave her alone… They [black women] have so much; what is it they lack Why is it they may be able to hook a man but can’t hold him?
– A public school administrator with the District of Columbia expresses the frustration and disappointment shared by many black women in the book What’s Love Got to Do With It?: Understanding and Healing the Rift Between Black Men and Women.
National stats show that 42% of black women have never been married, compared to 21% of white women. Yes, it’s twice as much. But does this mean Black women are doomed to be single?
People have thrown around so many reasons in a bid to explain the above stats. The most sighted are: lack of good single black men; the black woman is too independent to need a man to take care of her; undercover gay black men; the list is endless… But does this really explain the above statistics? The above reasons only explain why black women don’t get married to black men.
While reflecting, this public administrator decides not to ask the question ‘What’s wrong with Black men’, but ‘What’s wrong with her and other black women’. She discovered that “the skills that make one successful in the church, community or workplace are not the skills that make one successful in a relationship… sometimes an achieving woman will place her boyfriend so low on her list of priorities that his interest wanes… she’s seldom “there” for him, for the preliminaries that might develop a commitment to a woman.” This administrator places the black women’s dating challenges on black women themselves.
In trying to explain why most black women are single, in our reasoning, we tend to forget all about interracial marriage. For once, let’s think outside the box. Do you believe black women are the least likely group to get married in the U.S.? Do you think the administrator is right – blaming the black woman for her being single?
Correction: Your dating pool *ISN’T* too poor…
Also, there ARE places all over the internet where non-black men and women bash each other just as viciously as here (and every other AA site it seems… sigh.)
But since there’s not such an intense intrinsic and extrinsic social pressure for non-black races to date/marry within their own race, they don’t tend to use the racial tags in their discussions… they are just known as misogynists and feminazi’s…
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@ Love & NeuroticMoor,
keep speaking the truth guys. It’s about time some folks here told it like it is/should be!
Menelik Charles
London uk
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My girlfriend was black and I’m white. There were some differences in what she expected of me. Sometimes I felt like she was too dependent. Despite being smart and accomplished she had no money growing up and a strained relationship with her family.
It was like once I we got close she just expected me to carry all that baggage. I sympathized with a lot more black men after that, all the struggling and sometimes she expected me to be part of the furniture.
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@rick hayes lol ur funny@chrison that was bad SINGLE:IF YOUR SINGLE LIKE MYSELF….DON’T ALLOW LONELY,HORNEY ECT….. TO MAKE OU SETTLE,OR GO TO WHAT WAS NEVER GOOD FOR YOU,DNT SETTLE FOR LESS LADYS U GOT TO KNOW WHAT UR WORTH,I REALIZED SOME WOMAN R LUKING 4 MAN THEY CAN LIVE WITH AM LOOKING FOR A MAN I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT GOD BLESS EVERYONE ON THIS FORUM I LUV LUV LUV IT……
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Comment by chrisn on 27 March 2010:
“My girlfriend was black and I’m white. There were some differences in what she expected of me. Sometimes I felt like she was too dependent. Despite being smart and accomplished she had no money growing up and a strained relationship with her family.
It was like once I we got close she just expected me to carry all that baggage. I sympathized with a lot more black men after that, all the struggling and sometimes she expected me to be part of the furniture.”
It sounds like you are saying this was s problem all black women have, instead of the particular woman you were involved with.
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Honestly I know that in every Race of Men & Women there are Good & Bad People, just like God & Satan, Angels & Devils. Good Sex & Bad Sex etc. The main problem with this World We live in is that Critics & Hypocrites use what they see to make a General Judgement on all Men, Women & Races, when they should take in consideration of things of Life & relationships they have never or will never witness. As Human beings I think We should all be Ambitious when it comes to Love for each other & go for Who We are drawn to no matter the RACE. I truly believe that in all Races of Women they are all the SAME when We as Men know how to Respect & treat them, Mentally, emotionally, physically & Sexually. It’s not hard at all. As a FACT, the whole World knows historically Blacks live through the tuffest & roughest ways of living & even if many white People don’t know how that life feels ? In the end ALL RACES OF WOMEN WANT TRUE LOVE RESPECT & HONOR FROM ANY MAN THEY END UP WITH NO MATTER HIS COLOR. ALL RACE OF WOMEN WANT US AS MEN TO BE “MEN” AS GOD MADE US TO BE THERE FOR OUR WOMEN.
On behalf of all Black Women I know & see for myself that all Black Women want in Life is to know She is being truly Loved, cherished, respected & supported after going through such hard experiences in Life.
To BIGEYES31 & MsZ17 I’m loving Ur straight forward comments, I see Ur inner Beauties. Also thumbs up to all the Men on here who show their honest support for all our Women who need it.
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This issue so complex I don’t think any of us can completely wrap our head around it. But I will say this. The very thing that makes black women stand out, strength, is at times the same thing that works against us. As black women we are taught to be strong, independent and preserver through everything that thrown our way. Due to this we have had to take on masculine and feminine characteristics. We have had to adopt to being single (im speaking in general to make things easier) and be both the mother and the father since slavery days. Its because of this mentality some of us have a heard time allowing men to be men (through performing masculine traits) by relying on them and performing more feminine traits. I am not saying this is right. I am saying subconsciously we associate certain traits to masculinity and others to femininity which acts as part of our identity. Women from other cultures are not portrayed to be as masculine as us in the media. I blame society and the fact that we live in a patriarchal society that oppresses all women, but especially black women because we are placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Stereotypes of gender and race needs to be eliminated all together (as a side not, asian men are portrayed as passive which is a “feminine” trait in the media. They are put at the bottom just like black women. They too like black women are least likely to get married.)
Then there is the issue that some black woman will only date black men and the percentages of coupling do not work in their favour. The female population far outnumbers the man population as a whole so obviously not everyone is going to end up married.
Then you have to take into account education, family upbringing and cultural ideals of what beauty, masculinity and femininity is. This issue is a product of all these invisible forces that affect on a daily basis. As far as I am concerned its just another thing that makes us beautiful. Black is beautiful! There are lots of guys out there who see it to. We just have to make some MINOR changes WITHOUT compromising like: approaching guys, setting REALISTIC standards (if you don’t work out don’t expect to catch a guy with a 6 pack), looking at possibilities outside our race, etc.
I hope I made sense.
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VERY well said, 23 Ebony….
So True and So Real…good work, sis….you made MUCH sense.
Peace and Blessings
tatted2death
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@ Sexulous :
Very very good post.
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@ 23ebony:
Yes indeed you made sense. ^5
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